For the third year in a row, every organization, individual, and company is being asked to focus their attention on the persistent problem of domestic hunger. The day of thought — and action — is set for Thursday, June 3rd, and every effort makes a difference.

Everyone needs to ask why 35 million of our neighbors are living in poverty and what can be done to solve the problem. WHY advocates the long-term solutions and helps people get active in the anti-poverty movement every day. Special to National Hunger Awareness Day, America's Second Harvest and other sponsoring organizations will hold events across the country to commemorate the day.

In the U.S. and other first world countries, eating dirt is a psychological condition called Pica. In the third world, eating dirt is a matter of survival. In an article in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, Donald G. McNeil Jr. explores the desperate measures impoverished people around the world use to stave off starvation.

Mothers in many poor countries will boil water with stones and tell the children that the food is almost ready, hoping they will fall asleep waiting. Africans dig up anthills and termite mounds to sieve out the tiny grains the insects have gathered -- though some seeds provoke fatal allergic reactions. Like Chad's mukhet bush, wild cassava in tropical regions and baucia Senegalensis in West Africa are poisonous, but can be made edible by pounding and soaking for days. In Bangladesh, a type of lentil known to slowly destroy the nervous system is eaten when people are hungry enough, McNeil learned through an informal survey of World Food Program experts.

The dirt biscuits of Haiti, known as argile or terre, have even become a small business. Mixed with margarine or butter, the dirt biscuits are flavored with salt, pepper and bouillon cubes and spooned out by the thousands on cotton sheets in sunny courtyards that are kept swept as "bakeries." They cost about a penny apiece, wrote McNeil.

Anne-Sophie Fournier, director of the American branch of Action Against Hunger, was mentioned in the article, relaying anecdotal information about victims of the Soviet famines of the 1930s eating furniture. The article didn't mention, however, Action Against Hunger's very effective measures used to fight acute malnutrition around the world.

AAH pioneered the F100 therapeutic milk formula under Professor Michael Golden's guidance to fight severe acute malnutrition, a disease that totally disrupts a person's metabolism. This therapeutic milk enables basic metabolism to be reestablished, allowing a significant gain in body weight and almost full recovery in a mere 30 days. Now in use in nearly all relief efforts, F100 has led to a striking decrease - from 25% to 5% - in the mortality rate of children under the age of five. The organization has developed other anti-hunger measures as well, including PlumpyNut, a high-energy food based on peanuts which needs no dilution, avoiding any danger of water contamination, and BP 100, which comes in biscuit form and contains the same ingredients as F100.

Emergency feeding -- when combined with long-term food security strategies -- is a viable solution to extreme hunger.